Asked by: Sarah Jones (Labour - Croydon Central)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the potential effect of changes to Level 3 Qualifications on the education of 16 to 18 year-olds.
Answered by Robert Halfon
The department has published impact assessments to reflect the potential effect of reforms to Level 3, post-16 qualifications in England on the education of 16 to 19 year olds.
The most recent impact assessment, published in March 2023, provides an overview of the potential effects on students aged 16 to 19 resulting from the proposed removal of public funding approval from those qualifications that have been assessed as overlapping with T Levels. This can be accessed here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1146228/EIA_updated_final_wave_1_2_T_Level_overlap_inc_Health_and_Science.pdf.
A further impact assessment, published in July 2022, which reflects all planned reforms to qualifications at Level 3, is available here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1091841/Revised_Review_of_post-16_qualifications_at_level_3_in_England_impact_assessment.pdf.
Asked by: Sarah Jones (Labour - Croydon Central)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether his Department has plans to review statutory guidance on school uniforms in the context of increases in the cost of living.
Answered by Jonathan Gullis
Schools must regard the statutory guidance when they are developing and implementing their uniform policy. This demonstrates the Government’s commitment to keeping the cost of school uniform reasonable. The Department will monitor the impact of the guidance on an ongoing basis.
It is important that schools carefully consider the cost of their uniform and comply with the guidance, which is designed to ensure the cost of uniforms is reasonable and secures best value for money for parents.
Headteachers know their school communities best and can make decisions on the branded items that are most appropriate to their school. Branded items create a sense of common identity and prevent pupils from competing against one another in the latest fashion trends. The guidance requires headteachers to carefully consider the overall cost implications of their chosen approach, including whether requiring a branded item is the most cost-effective way of achieving the desired result for their uniform. To ensure that school uniform acts as a social leveller, optional branded items should be kept to a minimum.
Schools should be compliant with the majority of the guidance by September 2022, except where this would mean breaching a pre-existing contract, or where they need time to put a contract in place.
There are currently no plans to review the statutory guidance on the cost of school uniforms, published in November 2021, in the context of current increases in the cost of living. The guidance comes into force this month and requires schools to ensure their uniform is affordable.
Asked by: Sarah Jones (Labour - Croydon Central)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of offering more support to families on low incomes with school uniform costs.
Answered by Jonathan Gullis
Schools must regard the statutory guidance when they are developing and implementing their uniform policy. This demonstrates the Government’s commitment to keeping the cost of school uniform reasonable. The Department will monitor the impact of the guidance on an ongoing basis.
It is important that schools carefully consider the cost of their uniform and comply with the guidance, which is designed to ensure the cost of uniforms is reasonable and secures best value for money for parents.
Headteachers know their school communities best and can make decisions on the branded items that are most appropriate to their school. Branded items create a sense of common identity and prevent pupils from competing against one another in the latest fashion trends. The guidance requires headteachers to carefully consider the overall cost implications of their chosen approach, including whether requiring a branded item is the most cost-effective way of achieving the desired result for their uniform. To ensure that school uniform acts as a social leveller, optional branded items should be kept to a minimum.
Schools should be compliant with the majority of the guidance by September 2022, except where this would mean breaching a pre-existing contract, or where they need time to put a contract in place.
There are currently no plans to review the statutory guidance on the cost of school uniforms, published in November 2021, in the context of current increases in the cost of living. The guidance comes into force this month and requires schools to ensure their uniform is affordable.
Asked by: Sarah Jones (Labour - Croydon Central)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will issue guidance limiting the amount of branded clothing that schools may require pupils to wear as part of school uniform, in order to reduce the financial burden on low-income families.
Answered by Jonathan Gullis
In November last year, the department published statutory guidance on the cost of school uniforms, to which schools must have regard when designing and implementing their uniform policies. The guidance, which comes into effect this month, requires schools to ensure that their uniform is affordable and secures best value for money for parents, including keeping branded items to a minimum and limiting them to low-cost or long-lasting items.
It also requires schools to:
School leaders know their pupils and the community they serve best and can make decisions on the branded items that are most appropriate to their school. Branded items create a sense of common identity and prevent pupils from competing against one another in the latest fashion trends. The guidance requires school leaders to consider carefully the overall cost implications of their chosen approach, including whether requiring a branded item is the most cost-effective way of achieving the desired result for their uniform.
The guidance is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/cost-of-school-uniforms/cost-of-school-uniforms.
Asked by: Sarah Jones (Labour - Croydon Central)
Question to the Department for Education:
What steps he is taking to ensure that the attainment gap between disadvantaged children and their peers does not widen during the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The government has already committed over £100 million to boost remote education, including by providing devices and internet access to vulnerable children who need it most.
Schools also continue to receive the pupil premium – worth around £2.4 billion annually – to help them support their disadvantaged pupils.
Asked by: Sarah Jones (Labour - Croydon Central)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many departmental staff are working on implementing the recommendations of the Timpson review of school exclusions; and which directorate is responsible for that work.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Behaviour, Attendance, Exclusion and Alternative Provision Division of the Department for Education is the lead division taking forward the Government's programme of action on behaviour, exclusions and alternative provision.
As of September 2019, this division had 32 members of staff, and sits in the Strategy, Social Mobility & Disadvantage directorate.
The recommendations of the Timpson review of school exclusion are wide-ranging, and it is not possible to record how much time individual staff will spend working on them, as this work will be carried out in addition to other duties. Staff from across the Department will also contribute to the work on an ad hoc basis.
Asked by: Sarah Jones (Labour - Croydon Central)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what information the Government holds on schools’ ability to recruit and retain permanent teaching staff.
Answered by Nick Gibb
Information on the number of new entrants to teaching in state funded schools is available in Table 7a of the publication, School Workforce in England, 2017. This is available at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/school-workforce-in-england-november-2017.
Information on the retention of newly qualified teachers is available in Table 8 of the above publication. Further information on the retention of newly qualified teachers, including the characteristics and type of teacher training and regional information, is available in the Teachers Analysis Compendium 4 available at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/teachers-analysis-compendium-4.
In January 2019 the Department launched the Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy which outlines 4 key areas for reform and investment. These are creating the right climate for leaders to establish supportive school cultures, transforming support for early career teachers, building a career offer that remains attractive to teachers as their careers and lives develop, and making it easier for great people to become teachers.
Designed collaboratively with the sector, the centrepiece of the strategy is the Early Career Framework, which will underpin a fully-funded, two-year package of structured support for all early career teachers linked to the best available research evidence. The strategy can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/teacher-recruitment-and-retention-strategy.
Asked by: Sarah Jones (Labour - Croydon Central)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate he has made of the total number of (a) full-time teachers required for schools in England to all be fully staffed; and (b) full-time equivalent permanent teachers currently teaching in schools in England.
Answered by Nick Gibb
There are 451,870 full-time equivalent (FTE) teachers in service in state funded schools in England as of November 2017. Schools will always have some vacancies, temporarily filled vacancies or staff absences. They use occasional and other supply teachers to meet these demands. These teachers may not be fully reflected within FTE figures as these include only teachers who have a contract of over 28 days duration or, in the case of occasional teachers, are employed by the school on the day data is collected.
The Department collects details of teachers working in state funded schools through the annual School Workforce Census. The census does identify those teachers who are employed via a service agreement with an agency but not whether they are a supply teacher.
The following table provides the numbers and proportions of FTE teachers by their contract agreement type and the headcount number of occasional teachers in state funded schools in England for November 2013 to 2017:
| 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 |
CONTRACT TYPE[1] |
|
|
|
|
|
Permanent | 404,124 | 407,397 | 409,801 | 411,943 | 409,878 |
Fixed term | 24,529 | 25,978 | 26,000 | 25,320 | 24,133 |
Temporary | 17,867 | 17,616 | 17,116 | 16,091 | 14,635 |
Service Agreement with an Agency | 2,465 | 3,226 | 3,286 | 3,194 | 2,751 |
Service Agreement with Local Authority | 335 | 343 | 245 | 254 | 161 |
Service Agreement with Other Source | 338 | 394 | 413 | 431 | 291 |
Unknown | 5 | 16 | 4 | 4 | 21 |
Total | 449,663 | 454,969 | 456,865 | 457,236 | 451,870 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Head count of occasional teachers[2] | 13,484 | 14,105 | 13,064 | 12,783 | 11,757 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
PERCENTAGE |
|
|
|
|
|
Permanent | 89.9 | 89.5 | 89.7 | 90.1 | 90.7 |
Fixed term | 5.5 | 5.7 | 5.7 | 5.5 | 5.3 |
Temporary | 4.0 | 3.9 | 3.7 | 3.5 | 3.2 |
Service Agreement with an Agency | 0.5 | 0.7 | 0.7 | 0.7 | 0.6 |
Service Agreement with a Local Authority | 0.1 | 0.1 | 0.1 | 0.1 | 0.0 |
Service Agreement with another Source | 0.1 | 0.1 | 0.1 | 0.1 | 0.1 |
Unknown | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 |
Total | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 |
Source: School Workforce Census
The Department uses the Teacher Supply Model to estimate national postgraduate Initial Teacher Training place requirements for primary and each secondary subject and as part of this, estimates the longer term future demand for teachers in English state-funded schools. The most recently published model is available at the following web link: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/tsm-and-initial-teacher-training-allocations-2019-to-2020
[1] Teachers are recorded for those who have a contract of a least 28 days duration who are in service on the date of the census in November each year.
[2] Occasional teachers are a headcount of teachers with a contract of less than 28 days who were in school on the census day in November.
Asked by: Sarah Jones (Labour - Croydon Central)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will publish the number of agency supply teachers used by schools in England for each of the last five years.
Answered by Nick Gibb
There are 451,870 full-time equivalent (FTE) teachers in service in state funded schools in England as of November 2017. Schools will always have some vacancies, temporarily filled vacancies or staff absences. They use occasional and other supply teachers to meet these demands. These teachers may not be fully reflected within FTE figures as these include only teachers who have a contract of over 28 days duration or, in the case of occasional teachers, are employed by the school on the day data is collected.
The Department collects details of teachers working in state funded schools through the annual School Workforce Census. The census does identify those teachers who are employed via a service agreement with an agency but not whether they are a supply teacher.
The following table provides the numbers and proportions of FTE teachers by their contract agreement type and the headcount number of occasional teachers in state funded schools in England for November 2013 to 2017:
| 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 |
CONTRACT TYPE[1] |
|
|
|
|
|
Permanent | 404,124 | 407,397 | 409,801 | 411,943 | 409,878 |
Fixed term | 24,529 | 25,978 | 26,000 | 25,320 | 24,133 |
Temporary | 17,867 | 17,616 | 17,116 | 16,091 | 14,635 |
Service Agreement with an Agency | 2,465 | 3,226 | 3,286 | 3,194 | 2,751 |
Service Agreement with Local Authority | 335 | 343 | 245 | 254 | 161 |
Service Agreement with Other Source | 338 | 394 | 413 | 431 | 291 |
Unknown | 5 | 16 | 4 | 4 | 21 |
Total | 449,663 | 454,969 | 456,865 | 457,236 | 451,870 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Head count of occasional teachers[2] | 13,484 | 14,105 | 13,064 | 12,783 | 11,757 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
PERCENTAGE |
|
|
|
|
|
Permanent | 89.9 | 89.5 | 89.7 | 90.1 | 90.7 |
Fixed term | 5.5 | 5.7 | 5.7 | 5.5 | 5.3 |
Temporary | 4.0 | 3.9 | 3.7 | 3.5 | 3.2 |
Service Agreement with an Agency | 0.5 | 0.7 | 0.7 | 0.7 | 0.6 |
Service Agreement with a Local Authority | 0.1 | 0.1 | 0.1 | 0.1 | 0.0 |
Service Agreement with another Source | 0.1 | 0.1 | 0.1 | 0.1 | 0.1 |
Unknown | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 |
Total | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 |
Source: School Workforce Census
The Department uses the Teacher Supply Model to estimate national postgraduate Initial Teacher Training place requirements for primary and each secondary subject and as part of this, estimates the longer term future demand for teachers in English state-funded schools. The most recently published model is available at the following web link: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/tsm-and-initial-teacher-training-allocations-2019-to-2020
[1] Teachers are recorded for those who have a contract of a least 28 days duration who are in service on the date of the census in November each year.
[2] Occasional teachers are a headcount of teachers with a contract of less than 28 days who were in school on the census day in November.
Asked by: Sarah Jones (Labour - Croydon Central)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate he has made of the amount spent by schools in England on agency supply teachers for each of the last five years.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Department publishes the amount spent by schools on agency supply teaching staff (as well as costs and receipts from supply teacher insurance) annually for local authority maintained schools, and for academies. Published schools’ Consistent Financial Reporting and Academies’ Accounting Returns are available at the following link: https://schools-financial-benchmarking.service.gov.uk/Help/DataSources.
Data from previous years is also available, for local authority maintained schools from 2010, and for academies from 2012.